Waiting to get the stage
from the tuners and sound checkers!!!
S.Raman, Dr.Tommy Chandy, Ashley Williams, Ronnie Johnson
Rajendra and Party
The Chronic Blues Band: Ananth, Theo, Raveen and Peter
Rex Rosario Quartet: Vinoo, Victor, Rex on Sax and Bruce Lee
ATMA: Sandeep, Agnel, Nishant and Niranjan
Having the show, or any out door music show at 4 p.m. must have been a flash in the pan. In the heat, would anybody come so early? Nobody came, because if they did they would have cursed as the sun was directly on the crowd setting over the stage. The stage is something of a relic, and had seen many a drama in its past glory, having been erected in 1974. The stage was never meant for sound, and the design questionable as to its real purpose as the audience has a very narrow field of view of the participants performing. Well something is better than nothing. In time to come, perhaps it will be modified to be more effective than its present state. At least the music got back into action and back to the Park!
Due to shortage of water or rains, the grass was rather scraggy, but then you come to hear the music and not the grasshoppers. The concert was to start at 4 p.m., however no official time was re-scheduled for another start, and so at around 4.45 p.m. everyone got on the stage to do a so called 'sound check'. It was lots of sound and everyone was checking. Nobody was really sure where the sound was coming from as there were so many musicians fiddling away. Finally in the midst of this cacophony, the first serious attempt was made to get on with the show, and a put together band of musicians set up and started playing. What was more confusing was that there were only four musicians to play in the band, but a cross check showed as many as six to eight on the stage!!
The four were S.Raman on sax, flute and vocals; Ashley Williams(conductor of the BMA)on keyboards and vocals; Dr. Thomas Chandy (director of Hosmat)on guitar and vocals, and Ronnie Johnson on Bass guitar. The first piece went through and it was quite an insult to the players as many of the other musicians jammed in and created a confusion. (I had asked my daughter Joanne to tape the performance and she only taped the second piece thinking that we were still tuning, and you could still hear Bruce Lee Mani still tuning his guitar during the second number (see picture) till I asked him to get off the stage! My son Andrew who took some of these photos was also confused as to who was part of the group and who wasn't!!)
It was sad that the organizers came up on stage in the middle of the performance and asked us to pack up because Rajendra was to perform at 5 p.m., and that really pissed me off as we just got started. I got our guys off stage and we never returned. We only did two pieces of our scheduled four. Because of the way we came together we should have named ourselves 'Quickfix'!! Raman is an excellent flute and sax player, very flexible and anticipating. Ashley seriously concentrating on the piano part of the playing, that in the melee of others jamming in, he even forgot to switch on the drum beat of the keyboard and so we went through the whole of a number in a very lazydaisy flow!! Doc Tommy could only do one of his three scheduled nos.
Next time (I hope there will be one) perhaps we can be more organized, infact I am guilty of this mess, as only on Saturday night did we seriously think of putting together a jazz band, and the first time we actually got together in full was on the stage!! This was my first performance after a break of 30 odd years!! The last time I played was with Axis (Late Loy Machado, Tommy Alexander, Vincent Lobo, Ronnie Johnson) my own group, a Rock Band!! This was my first performance with my Fender Jazz Bass that my friends (Romaine Hayes, Alan Fintzel, Henry Stevens and Gussy Rikh) from around the world sponsored for me.
Rajendra and party sang and played for about an hour and then were finally moved out for the next performance.
Peter Issac's ( a well known musician of Bangalore) Chronic Blues Band were on next and they did some of the reggae music. A little more harmony would have been excellent. I hadn't heard Peter in years, and he seemed to sound like John Fogerty of CCR. Peters drummer 'Theodora' was a fair and frail girl who did a good job of filling in along with the keyboard drum. The keyboard player Raveen Panday and bass Ananth Menon were well rehearsed. Peter was on guitar and vocals backed by the others.
Next was Rex Rosario Quartet, he is a good sax player keeping mainly to the old Louis Armstrong jazz style. The bassist Vinoo Mathew was kind of impressive with his flashy runs, (maybe next time I would give him a few of mine)!! The guitarist Bruce Lee Mani did not give me the impression of how people rated him, and his lead work was rather muffled and not as I expected from him. The drummer Victor was steady. They did about 40 minuites of old time jazz with their own stuff apparently thrown in.
After they went off came the hard rock band Atma, a Jim Morrison style singer Nishant Bali, on lead guitar Niranjan Burke and (red hot chilly peppers low slung) bassist Sandeep Madhavan with anchor Agnel Bankien on drums. They did a good session on standard rock and roll session of Doors, Deep Purple, Stones and a few others plus a composition. Entertaining, as the sound was different to the others. I heard them at practice, this live performance of theirs impressed me. Infact, each set of musicians did a different style of music and no over lap.
Show would have closed around 9 pm., next time perhaps it would close later, depending on the number of performers.
Good attendance, which mainly came around 6.30 -7 ish! The crowd should have been around 300 all scattered around the Park, sitting on the lawns. There were a couple of dogs that also ran freely through the sitters and I think it was enjoyable as a start.
One must thank M/s Venkataramanan Associates, Architects who sponsored this first show and took responsibility for everything. The sound equipment belonged to Peter Issac, and consisted of a few Fender twin reverb amps, Roland 100 Bass, and a few other amps and mixers. Sound was sufficient, but in the begining because of the problem of no sound check did not give the output that came on at the later stages after the mastering was mastered!! Thanks Peter we will meet again when Gussy comes down!. I dont know much about the artists Max or Ajay Gulati or even the farmers Yohann and Shekar. I dont think they said their say as proposed. However, a Van was parked in the Park with all kinds of vegatables for sale from the farm and it did good and emptied.
After a long time,a show like this was conducted and it carried on its own well and truly accepted, and I think the crowd enjoyed the performances. My only regrets was that we were not able to give them our music, because of the truncated performance.
Cheers,
Ronnie
